- One of the ways to make your self publishing book
look more professional is to set up a publishing company.
It's not as hard or as complicated as you think.
Stick around.
I'll explain.
(lively music)
Hello, my friend.
I'm Julie the Book Broad.
With booklaunchers.com,
your professional self publishing team,
where we help you write, publish,
and sell non-fictions books
that grow your business and make you money.
And the best part, you keep all the rights and royalties.
So one of the things I did
when I self published that really helped my book
look more professional was create
a publishing company and get a logo.
Here's an example from one of our clients.
Gillian Goerzen's book.
This is what I'm talking about.
A simple logo on the spine and inside the book.
Somewhere in here.
Now I'm not talking about getting an LLC
or a corporation or setting up some fancy pants business
that you now have to file taxes for.
And it's all expensive and painful and such.
If you want to ask me about painful,
just get me talking about what it's like
to be a Canadian living in the United States
with corporations in both countries.
I pay a lot of taxes.
So we don't want to go there.
No, I'm just talking about claiming a company name
and creating a nice black and white logo
to put on your book spine and on your copyright page
as the publisher and maybe some
of the media materials that go out.
So here's what you do.
First you need to name your company.
Here are my general guidelines.
Check to make sure the name,
the business name, isn't already in use.
In Canada I did a business registry search
on OneStop business registry.
(ragtime music)
In the US I did through the local country office website.
They have a search functionality.
Here, I'll show you what
the LA County office site looks like.
(ragtime music)
Just because the business name is available
doesn't mean you should roll with it just yet.
You also need to check website availability.
We use Namecheap or HostGator.
But use your favorite domain provider.
Then you want to choose a name
that is unrelated to your brand
so that it sounds more like a publishing company.
For example mine is called Stick Horse Publishing.
Gillian went with Winchelsea Media
I think is what she did.
I'll give you some ideas in a few minutes
of what you might want to call your publishing company.
Don't make it too crazy to pronounce
or just get too crazy about it.
You're really just trying to create something
that sounds like a publishing company name.
Now you're creating a fictitious business name
and filing DBA papers.
DBA, doing business as papers.
If your business corp is going to own
the publishing company you can file the DBA under the corp.
Or you can file it under you personally.
Whatever you want to hold the book revenue under.
Then you take that name and go to your county office
and file your doing business DBA from there.
Rules change by state and county.
Luckily you aren't expected
to figure it out all on your own.
The clerk will give you a list of next steps to take.
And in LA the instructions on the website
were pretty clear for me.
In Canada again, I was able to do all of this
through OneStop business registry online.
I didn't have to go anywhere or pay anything.
After you've finished all the paperwork,
you can take that DBA form from the county
and open a bank account or if you already have
a business bank account,
it should be simple to add your new publishing company
to the list of authorized deposits.
This will be a new income stream for your business.
Then when we're setting up your accounts
for print on demand and audiobooks
or if you're doing it yourself,
your publishing company can get paid.
And now you know what to put in the publisher field
when you do the upload.
Next you need to get a logo designed.
Keep it simple.
You can hire someone on fiverr.
Fiverr.com to get something done for a low cost
that still looks professional.
Remember you're not building
a big international brand around this company.
It's really more for appearances than anything else.
Really focus on getting a simple logo
that looks good in black and white.
'Cause again it's going on your book spine,
the copyright page, and maybe some media materials.
That's it.
If you choose to set up a publishing company website,
and doing this is optional.
I just highly recommend it because
it makes your book look more professional.
But if you're doing this,
you need to have this step completed before your cover
is designed and ideally before you buy your ISBN
and set up your print on demand accounts.
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Now go ahead, tell me what your publishing company name
is going to be called.
I'm going to throw some crazy ideas at you
while you decide which one
of these great videos to watch next.
How about Pig Pony Publishing?
Blue Yellow Publishing?
Magnificent Manuscripts
or Baby Shark boo boo ba doo books.
(laughing)
Yeah you better click on another video really really soon.
I can't wait to see you on the next one.